'ANZAC Girls' – Australian and New Zealand nurses at war

This group includes profiles of the five nurses featured as characters in the six-part series 'ANZAC Girls', screening on ABC1 during August - September 2014.
Here you can read the actual records that document the service of these courageous women: Matron Grace Wilson, Sister Alice Ross King, Sister Olive Haynes, Sister Elsie Cook, and Sister Hilda Steele.
These are just a few of the several thousand nurses who served with Australian and New Zealand forces during World War I. About 2,500 Australian nurses served overseas with the Australian Army Nursing Service, and about 720 more nurses and masseuses joined other allied services. Twenty-eight nurses died.
From New Zealand about 610 nurses served overseas with the New Zealand Army Nursing Service, and about 100 with allied services. Sixteen died.
They served in all theatres of war in locations as diverse as Egypt, Greece, India, France, Belgium and England. They worked not only in base hospitals but on ships, trains and in casualty clearance stations close to the front line.
The Archives welcomes the community’s help to identify and add as many Australian and New Zealand army nurses to this group profile as possible.

Kitty (Sister Catherine) McNaughton is also mentioned. Kitty is part of my extended McNaughton clan. Her grandfather Samuel McNaughton and my great-great-grand-father John McNaughton were brothers, born in Fort William in Argyll, Scotland. There are many McNaughtons throughout Victoria and Australia.

smiller366

Saturday, 19 September 2015

The Introduction to Peter Rees book "The Other ANZACS" refers to 3 Australian pre-Anzac nurses serving in a makeshift hospital at the fall of Antwerp in October 1914. (ISBN: 978 1 74237 118 4). All the medical staff in this hospital were women and eventually received the 1914 Star (Mons Star) with bars (and rosettas).
The names are corrected in 2014 edition called "ANZAC GIRLS" (ISBN: 9781743319826)
S/Nurse Caroline Ellen Wilson can be found at
http://discoveringanzacs.naa.gov.au/browse/person/54219